Living the Jungle Book

From the train, we had a three hour drive to breakfast.  At first we were all dreading another long commute, until we learned that we had the privilege of looking at this for three hours.  I'm not sure if it's true, but someone mentioned that the Jungle Book movie set was based off of Kerala. I'd believe it.  Oddly enough, we found an astounding amount of things in India could be related to Disney movies.  With 18 american girls together, I know that's shocking.

And this

We stopped to have our first Indian breakfast, and all of our muscles hurt from sitting for so long, so we took a walk around and discovered that you can't go anywhere in Kerala without it being beautiful.  It was just mountains on hillsides on mountains covered in green, and the mountains were bigger than anything I could have imagined.  I think I still don't have my head wrapped around it.  If you've ever seen the Emperor's New Groove, one of the characters talks about the hill he lives on.  He says "when the sun hits the ridge just right, these hills sing." Well I don't think I have ever heard a truer statement.  I wish that pictures could capture it, but they don't.  These are the best I can do though!

 View from our breakfast restaurant

And then I did some bad yoga on a wall?

We then went to a spice plant/museum on the way to Kerala.  Jacob was really good about breaking up the long bus rides.  The spice plant was so so so cool.  We had an awesome tour guide that took us on a walk and could describe the harvestation (is that a word) and uses for each and every plant we saw.  I wanted to dig up every one and send it home to Sean so he could take it to McCormick and look impressive.  We saw rubber trees, and I realized I had a really skewed understanding of how rubber worked.  They basically tapped these trees like maple trees and had a little bowl at the end that collected white thick rubber.  It looked like Elmers glue, but definitely smelled like rubber.  I also saw a cocoa tree, which was really cool! I wish they had a pamphlet or something so I could record what everything did, because I figure that if these women have been using the plants as medicines for all this crazy stuff for thousands of years, they must be on to something.  And I could open an apothecary in the states?

Rubber tree tap!

Our ballin tour guide. He knew literally
everything there is to know about these plants

Cocoa plant! Literal Cocoa nuts hehe 

Apparently insulin comes from a plant?

We then went to a National Park in Kerala, after freshening up at the hotel.  Going to this national park was my first really weird experience of being white here.  We drove up to the entrance, and the line to get in was really long.  When we got out, Jacob just told us to walk up, and we did.  We probably skipped a 2 hour wait, just because of our skin color.  I don't think I'm ok with that, it's not like we did anything to deserve it.  It was just really uncomfortable.  Anyway, this hike was so cool.  

A view from the bus ride up

Well, the ride up was terrifying, because there were even narrower, windier roads.  

A view from the narrower, windier roads

Indians beep all the time, and for awhile we just thought it was for the hell of it.  But I realized they do it to announce themselves when they can't see what's coming around a bend.  So thats why horns were invented! Anyway, after the drive up we hiked up a little further.  

Just a nice, relaxing hike

They are dead serious about their national parks in India.  There kept being signs reminding you that the national park "is not for you alone" and to not disturb the animals.  At the top there was a chain that didn't let you go any further because native tribes still live on the top part of the mountain.  I really like that they aborigines them keep their land and protect their beautiful landscapes.  

You can't really read it, but this sign says:
Remove nothing from here except
Nourishment for the soul
Consolation for the heart
Inspiration for the mind

I know I keep saying it, but the view at the top was incredible (I need to get a thesaurus).  The mountains just went on and on, it's kind of hard to wrap my head around actually.  But I can't describe it as well as these pictures!

This is not real life

We're on a mountain!

I didn't think the view was THAT pretty.  Siiiiiike!